by J. R. Trtek
The Hapsburg Falcon
J.R. Trtek
Copyright © 2013 J.R. Trtek
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1434854612
ISBN 13: 9781434854612
Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914783
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
Cover Image: London Rain by F. J. Mortimer, Hulton Archive, Getty Images
To the memory of my grandmother, who was ten when these events occurred.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE: The Uses of Deduction
CHAPTER TWO: A Pillar of State
CHAPTER THREE: The Woman’s Story
CHAPTER FOUR: One Step Behind
CHAPTER FIVE: Anxiety in the Air
CHAPTER SIX: A Most Corpulent Fellow
CHAPTER SEVEN: Two Visitors
CHAPTER EIGHT: Four Interviews
CHAPTER NINE: Unexpected Arrivals
CHAPTER TEN: The Quarry and Its History
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Shifting Courses
CHAPTER TWELVE: Revelation and Pursuit
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Captives
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: The Object at Last
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Kismet
Appendix A: On the Details of the Find
Appendix B: Parallel Chronologies
Appendix C: Sam Spade and Sherlock Holmes
CHAPTER ONE :
The Uses of Deduction
“There are days when I long to reside elsewhere.” So spoke Sherlock Holmes one damp afternoon in late spring.
Standing at the bow window of his sitting room, I turned to contemplate my friend as he replaced a violin string. “Truly?” I asked. “You would consider leaving Baker Street?”
“Rather, I should consider leaving Britain.”
“You cannot be serious, Holmes. Surely you exaggerate.”
“Do I? Well, pardon me, Watson,” he begged with a wan smile. “My luggage is not yet packed, but the remark does bear a germ of truth—and you may blame the old nemesis: inactivity. More than once during your current stay at 221, I’ve commented upon London crime’s loss of vigour. That malaise, I fear, has now spread across the whole of our island.”
“Such is your reward for more than twenty years of labour in the field of detection.”
“‘Reward’ is a less than fitting characterization,” he replied wistfully, plucking the new string. “Rather, if your generous conclusion is correct, then in hindsight, I should have contained youthful enthusiasm to preserve some challenges for old age.”
“But to choose emigration—”
“Ah! But consider the abundance of opportunity that lies abroad. There is such promise beyond our quiet metropolis and placid countryside. Why, this morning’s Daily News reports the unsolved and rather brutal murder of a Greek art dealer in Paris. Even from the brief, printed account, it appears a most singular case, Watson, ripe with many exceptional features of interest.”
Holmes sighed and leaned back in his armchair, his eyes languid as he tuned the Stradivarius. “Were these digs near the Seine rather than the Thames, I daresay we should even now be upon the scent; instead, I sit and restring violins while you anxiously await more bad news from the race-course. If I may ask, how much were you persuaded to place upon this latest of dark horses, as the Americans would term it?”
I stared with wide eyes at my companion as he stood to scrape his bow across the strings. “I fear I do not understand,” was my brusque reply.
“Indeed,” remarked Holmes, pausing in his stroke. “As it is yet another of Mr. Finney’s supposed ‘certain winners,’ your reticence does not surprise.”
“Why would you believe that I—”
“Come, come, Watson. You know my—”
“Yes, Holmes, I know your methods.”
“Or rather, Doctor, you know of them.”
“I have read of them, I believe.”
“Touché,” said he, chuckling. With care, Holmes placed his instrument in its case, set both to one side, and, arms crossed, considered me with an amused air.
“Watson, you have passed nearly one hour doing little more than intermittently staring out the window. In all the years we shared this residence, Baker Street itself never fascinated you so, and I very much doubt your most recent absence has spawned some new interest in the local environs. No, yours is the behaviour of one awaiting a visitor—and a very anxious wait it has been too, for all the pacing I’ve witnessed. Yet despite its presumed importance, this call is to be brief, for otherwise you would have politely informed me of your need to employ the sitting room. But then”—he arched his brows playfully while his lips gave hint of a sly smile—“I fancy you prefer I should not learn of this visit at all.”
“Yet how—”
“Then there is the all too prominent pair of shillings you have time and again pulled from your pocket to admire as you stood looking down into the street. That is your usual tip to a message-boy, is it not? Yes, I believe you expect a vital telegram.”
“Your mention of horses—”
“—was occasioned by a remark you made two nights ago upon our return from that concert at the St. James’s Hall. You asked Mrs. Hudson for a small store of molasses to be set against your account. Why? You are even less fond of it than I, but in those years when you lodged here, you often provided a watered mixture of it to your friend—the untutored would think him a patient—Mr. Finney.”
“The man continues in excellent health but refuses to believe it,” I said. “The potion gives him no benefit, but neither does it harm him, while soothing his concerns in the bargain.”
“Yes, and as I always understood that bargain, Mr. Finney, in lieu of payment, evened his debt by supplying you with race-course information, which was equally efficacious, if more damaging to your pocket and peace of mind.”
“According to him, this horse is vastly under-rated!”
“I’ve no wish to debate handicaps,” said my friend, raising one hand. “There are two more beads on my deductive necklace of facts, but your confession makes further elaboration pointless. And so there you stand, Watson, braced to learn the details of this, your most recent equine disaster.”
“Such sarcasm is beneath you, Holmes!”
“Do excuse the sharpness of my edge, old fellow,” he said with sudden compassion, approaching me at the bow window. “Though I must add that the apparent state of your accounts does give me cause to worry. But halloa,” he cried. “Look there! We have a visitor now, though not your anticipated messenger. The subject of conversation, I venture, is unlikely to be alleged thoroughbreds.”
I glanced down into Baker Street and saw Inspector Stanley Hopkins leave a hansom and advance briskly toward the door of 221.
“Perhaps there is reason to hope, eh, Watson?” Holmes was suddenly a changed man; his voice fairly sang. “He appears most troubled, does he not? And our friend Hopkins is not an emotional man. We may yet have set upon our table a challenge worthy of the old days!” And quickly unpacking his Stradivarius again, he reeled off bars of Paganini in a raucous, music-hall style.
Moments later, Holmes’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson, admitted the inspector into our sitting room. During the past few years, Stanley Hopkins had lost more than a touch of his youth in rough proportion to the number of stone he had gained, but his bearing was erect as ever, the intelligent glint of his eyes undimmed.
“Take the basket-chair if you will, Hopkins,” said Holmes. “May I offer you refreshment?”
Hat in hand, the man from Scotland Yard gently shook his head and set his large frame down at once. Holmes curled up in the armchair while I kept my station at the window.
“It is not that we ev
er fail to enjoy your company for its own sake,” Sherlock Holmes continued. “Or that we tire of news concerning Mrs. Hopkins and the child, but I do hope this visit concerns business rather than leisure.”
“Yes, it’s business,” replied Hopkins. “Serious business, I can tell you, sirs, and business of a most delicate sort.”
“We are a rapt audience,” said Holmes, swinging one leg over the chair’s rest. “Raise the curtain, please.”
“I have come to request your assistance—and that of Dr. Watson—in determining the whereabouts of the Honourable Robert Hope Maldon.”
“Hope Maldon? The family of Lord Monsbury, the cabinet minister?”
“Yes. I refer to his youngest son, in fact.”
“Hum. I recall no mention of a disappearance.”
“The newspapers have cooperated in hushing up the matter, Mr. Holmes.”
“Ah! Of course. Well, Watson, perhaps all the while I should have been blaming censorship for our quiet times. But on with your story,” said the detective, again changing pose, this time drawing up both feet to sit with his hands wrapped round his shins.
“An odd story it is,” said Hopkins, taking from his buff coat a notebook. “Mr. Hope Maldon, age twenty-four, resides alone in a suite of rooms at Breton Mansions. On the morning of the seventh, more than a week ago, he hailed a cab in front of that block of flats. In his possession were two pieces of luggage.”
“Have you any notion as to whether they were both fully packed?” Holmes asked without hesitation.
“In truth, one was nearly empty,” said Hopkins crisply, with a hint of pride. “So the driver of the cab replied when I asked him that very question. He distinctly recalled the fact, because a traveller with empty luggage is an oddity.”
Holmes smiled. “‘Can be’ is perhaps a characterization superior to ‘is,’ but pray, proceed.”
“The young man was delivered to St. Glevens Hospital by way of the Camberwell Road. There he commanded his driver to wait at the kerb while he walked a short distance to the south end of the building. At that location, which opens onto a court, Mr. Hope Maldon stood beside a pillar-box1 for several minutes, as seen by the driver, his luggage remaining within the cab. Have you a question?”
Holmes tilted his head to one side. “I was about to ask the fate of the luggage, but you anticipated my inquiry. Go on.”
“Suddenly,” Hopkins continued, “the young man took a bright blue kerchief from his pocket and, according to the driver, ostentatiously flourished it before regaining the cab to return to Breton Mansions. Since then—”
“Did the driver more precisely define the nature of this ‘flourish’?” inquired Sherlock Holmes.
“I don’t get your question, sir.”
My friend placed his feet upon the floor and gestured as he spoke. “Did he wave the kerchief, and if so, was it up and down, from side to side, or in circles? In combinations of these, perhaps? Were there pauses? And in what direction did he face? Was the kerchief presented in turn to all points of the compass or to just one?” Holmes then stared silently at our caller for a moment and added, “That, Hopkins, is my question or, rather, my sequence of queries.”
The man from Scotland Yard nervously brushed the knees of his soft, tweed trousers. “Truth to tell, Mr. Holmes, I did not think to pursue such details. I have to give you best there, I am afraid.”
The detective shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Let us call it no matter. What happened next then?”
“Mr. Hope Maldon returned to his flat and has not been seen since that day. Those facts are the sum of all I can relate.”
Holmes frowned and made a steeple with his fingers. After a brief silence, he spoke in subdued tones. “Forgive me, Hopkins, but I must confess you disappoint. Such cases of supposed disappearance are quite more commonplace than the public suppose, and a number of possibilities suggest themselves. For example, the boy may have—”
“Sir, there are additional details of relevance.”
“Oh? I thought you said you’d no more to give. Well, man, don’t bait me. What are these details?”
The inspector put away his notebook and, blushing mildly, replied, “I do not know.”
Holmes raised his brows and glanced at me before turning back to our visitor. “At last you have baffled me, Hopkins,” said he, raising open hands to the air. “How could you not—”
“Mr. Holmes, it is the young man’s father, Lord Monsbury himself, and he alone, who possesses that additional information. He spoke to me last evening concerning his son’s presumed disappearance, and he requested—I should more properly say commanded—that in this matter the Yard stand aside for you. The earl personally told me there are vital facts he would relate to you and no one else. As I declared a moment ago, my notebook has nothing more for you; the further history must come from Lord Monsbury himself.”
“Well!” said Holmes, slapping the armrest. “The case is hardly outré at first glance, but we shall see. In my present state of boredom even small riddles must substitute for grand enigmas. Hopkins, I shall take the lure as if the good doctor here had cast the fly himself. Consider the case accepted—for the time being. And you, Watson? Would you be game for a midday drive, or will you stay to await your caller?”
“I shall go, of course,” I said stiffly. “Mrs. Hudson may receive any message that arrives for me.”
“Good. As always, I shall very much desire the benefit of your perspective. Indeed, fresh air will benefit the both of us, I daresay. I do propose, however, an examination of the young man’s rooms at Breton Mansions before calling upon Lord Monsbury. Is that possible, Hopkins?”
“Of course it is, Mr. Holmes,” replied the inspector with a smile. “I expected such a request from you and shall be pleased to be part of the company. We have had the premises under guard for several hours.”
“Excellent. Please allow us to change, and if you would kindly whistle a four-wheeler, we shall be down presently.”
The inspector descended to the street while Holmes and I retired to our respective rooms. As I came down to re-enter the sitting room, Holmes hailed me from below, where he already stood poised before the door to 221, ready to depart.
“I have your hat and waterproof,” he said as I silently counted the seventeen steps to the ground floor. “The light rain has abated but may still return,” Holmes added as I took my garments from him. “Oh, and I have, in discreet terms, instructed Mrs. Hudson with respect to your expected caller.”
“Thank you, Holmes. I believe, however, that—”
“I included the matter of the two-shilling tip, old fellow,” he said pleasantly. “We may even up later.”
“Very well,” I said, donning my hat and begrudgingly nodding my appreciation.
“I do think Hopkins to be the best of the litter,” Holmes remarked while helping me into my waterproof. “The Yard is well served by him, despite his occasional failures of note. I find it difficult to forget the Milligan investment scandal, but Hopkins did learn a valuable lesson from that episode. Mind you, the man still lacks a consistent thoroughness, but he is resourceful in his way.”
“He is resourceful enough to invite you into this affair.”
“That was the Earl of Monsbury’s doing,” corrected my friend. “But lead on, Watson. Perhaps fortune smiles and challenging mysteries await us.”
Minutes later, we were all riding south. Holmes’s fear of renewed precipitation had proved unfounded for the immediate future, and emerging sunlight made even the dun-coloured houses of Baker Street seem radiant.
“I confess, Doctor,” Hopkins said as we inhaled the fresh breeze. “Your presence at 221 gave me surprise. You still have your residence and practice in Queen Anne Street, do you not?”
“Yes,” was my reply. “However, as my fiancée is away on family business, Holmes graciously invited me to share his hospitality during her absence.”
“Oh, I see,” said Hopkins as our cab turned into Oxford S
treet. “Somehow I had the notion you were already wed, sir.”
“The wedding is planned for August,” I told him. Then, realizing that I had allowed my personal communication with Hopkins to lapse during the past many months, I tactfully added, “Of course, we are only now about to send out invitations. You and your wife will receive one, of course.” I made a mental note of the impromptu commitment.
“Ah, Oxford Street,” said Holmes, smiling subtly in my direction as his interruption drew the inspector’s attention away from my social embarrassment. “I tell you, no other thoroughfare so conveys the pulse of London. It is a shame our ride today will follow but a fraction of its total continuation—in all, a straight-line bisection of the imperial metropolis, gentlemen, from Hanwell to Barking.”
“There is a slight kink as it enters the City,2 I believe,” added Hopkins.
“True,” said Holmes with a nod. “Nonetheless, one traversal of its full length would provide anyone, native or visitor, with a full understanding of this grand capital.” Holmes then expounded on the architectural history of the portion of road along which we travelled.
In time, we glided past the edge of Hyde Park, its moist green shades shining brilliantly. The sight of distant strollers and riders helped ease my pique at Holmes’s recent remarks concerning my wagers. Indeed, as I took in the fresh, rain-washed panorama and recalled bathing in the Serpentine during summer, I silently confessed to myself that his comments had been all too accurate and that my anger had been grounded in the defensive airs of a foolish man.
Eventually we passed Victoria Station and then crossed the steel and granite of Vauxhall Bridge. As we came to Kennington Oval, our conversation turned toward the matter at hand for the first time since boarding the four-wheeler.
“In this, as in any case, there are points of focus,” Hopkins declared. “A few, I think, may be considered.” The inspector briefly regaled us with his own intuitions in the matter without interruption from Holmes. “And, in my own view,” he concluded, “Mr. Hope Maldon’s behaviour beside the pillar-box is perhaps the most intriguing detail we yet have.”